Full circle

The helm, literally -is an entirely different thing than a tiller, or a jog stick; though oftentimes being in control of a boat by any one of these things can be loosely referred to as, "being at the helm". But a true helm is a wheel complete with spokes and and hand pins, a Turks head knotted around the pin aligning mid ship rudder with keelson to this neutral helm position. These days, very few fuel powered boats have an actual wheel from which the craft is steered by; albeit traditionalists, small old fishing boats and cadet training ships do.
Standing at the helm of the retried racing yawl Figaro IV, a 51 ft Sparkman and Stephens, making the reaching across the pond from key west to Grand Abaco, on morning watch I mentioned to the skipper (and owner of the time) Jorry Squib the similarities I had suddenly found between steering a large boat and riding a horse.
Jorry not being one for small talk always found the time to either fully engage his wonderful intellect or give you fair warning that now was not the time. I was fortunate enough that morning to have picked a good moment in which to voice my epiphany. "How so" Jorry asked peering inquisitively at me for sailing was his life's blood and i was merely a recent high school graduate. He had not known me the 17 years prior - the years I had from age 4 until 16 immersed in horses in every which way however I could without the support of my parents.
I had had allot of time to think sailing a boat from Camden Maine to the crossing we were now on. I hadn't expected to find the same feelings I had known galloping down a 2 mile dyke aboard my Arab quarter horse, ginger, as I had experienced reaching off of block island in fresh breeze alone at the helm before dawn but there it was: the freedom of being engaged with the power of nature and the effort of force rewarded by blood flow, invigorating the mind to will itself onward a communion with living life. And onward went the miles underneath the keel full of fresh air, wonder and natural movement requiring courage, strength and heart. Without the horse or the boat I would have only know stagnation, frustration, self pity, un-worth.
And so I found word for these emotions which flew out of my mouth like the birds from the scudding cumulus clouds and I said,
"both are large and require confident, skilled, handling. Both respond to the minutiae of pressure-force signals; aides of touch. Both could throw their rider at any given moment if the rider lost touch with the present reality. And both offered up freely, willing a special relationship: a passage trough space and time on the back of a majestic- mythic even-"beast".
I cant say if Jorry made any particular comment, but I do recall his broad sincere smile-a grin that meant to me that he knew that I had gotten it.
Though sailing led me far away from horses in my daily life, it's journey which altered course into a career as a commercial fisherman, kept me in touch with them in strange ways. There were my cousins horses in North Carolina which I could always rely upon whenever I dropped in for a visit. Jeff never allowed just anyone to ride Katie, his prized mare, but I could drop down out of the sky from Alaska and be up a the barn tacking her up within the same hour of arriving "home". There were the wild Icelandic ponies of Chernofski sheep ranch on the western end of Unalaska island which I rode green in order to round up the islands sheep. There were stables to rent from and trail riding events. There were roadside muzzles to sniff while off on a bike riding adventure, there were horses that got looks which I could catch. There were dreams.
Eventually the fishing career soured and I turned to land lubbering; all the while Equis kept rearing up inside my pshcye, whinnying. Riding other people's horse helped to quench the yearning -a little-but then came the big FOUR-OH.
Suddenly there was the finish line of life staring me in the whites of my eyes and with it the grim reaper standing there in formal grand prix dressage costume saying, so Shannon, did you ever really learn how to ride?
Visions coveted since I was a pre- pubescent girl began to overpower my relatively calm mind. There were 17 hand warm bloods flying over oxers with legs curled beneath like wood shavings, the rider's face intent. There were prancing Welsh Cobs bred with Thoroughbreds and Trakaners executing perfect dressage in a dust -less outdoor arena surrounded by green mountains, the rider's coat tails levitating just over the horses powerful rear like the tail of a swallow coasting a river current at dusk. There was the sweaty galloping athletic rider guiding her sweating athletic steed up the steep bank of an amazingly frightening but awe inspiring water jump on a cross country course. There were trailers and braids and brushes and boots and white high collared blouses and exhausted legs and tired hands and I felt that I was being suffocated: I must ride a horse!
I thought this would go away with the camp horse my friend down the rode borrowed for the spring. Nico was a quarter horse mutt that stood maybe15 hands. He loaded well into the trailer-probably because he thought we were taking him away from there for good-although it was only while trying to load him back into the same trailer one and half months later that he all but refused-that we thought maybe his home was hell. Nico came without a history, or any tack. I used my snaffle bit and Margie's western saddle. I rode him bare back, but he was so sway backed and had such sharp whithers that I vowed never to do so again. He through Margie twice and her 6 year old son once. I rode him again after that with a pretty good responses, but the very next day he refused to come for the first time. naturally it was the day to load him and take him home. For Margie, this experience cured her horse cravings but I only wound up with the worst case of equine fever I have ever had.
That very afternoon i drove the 45 miles out to Fox Bay Farm stables to watch a lesson. I had called earlier to inquire into taking lessons there as the stables I had originally phoned up were no longer offering lessons to students without horses. Marg (the g is pronounced like the g in cog) Clumpner, the owner of Fox bay was recommended to me after I protested that there were no places in Whatcom county to learn equitation-only barrel racing and roping-"shes excellent"-the women said-"she teaches dressage and hunter class jumping". Marg and I had set up a time for me to come and watch a lesson and meet one another prior to me just showing up and winging it. Horses, riders and riding instructors form a triad upon which the seat of success cannot rest securely without there being an understanding first of some very important if not basic, relationship factors: professionalism, respect and trust.
After viewing the lesson from a dust soaked booth in the far corner of the short side of the indoor arena, I knew what I had been trying to subdue for over 24 years: I need to be around horses.
One week later I arrived at the stables for my first proper riding lesson since 1976. I was told which horse to catch and went out to the paddock Tully shared with Brio and instantly fell in love. Tully is by far the biggest horse I have ridden; close to 16 hands, he appears to be a cross between quarter horse and thoroughbred. He is a chestnut gelding with a white blaze and the kind, patient eyes. I tied him up to the cross ties under the long eaves running down along the stalls and groomed him blowing in his nose and talking gently. I put boots around his fetlocks and pastern and tacked him up and led him into the arena where Marg checked out my tacking job, and instructed me on how to mount using a mounting block (using stirrups puts undue stress on the withers of the horse, pulls the hairs of the back into pressure points underneath the saddle pad and causes wear on the saddle). The lesson began as naturaly as rain falls from the sky. Tully was ready and eager as was I. One of the barn cats wandered through the dusty arena on prowl. Marg's strong clear voice signaled my brain with her concise instructions, equitation theory was hammering its way into my soul. without expectations, frustration or dissapointment, in one hours time she had taught me how to turn my sloppy, saddle slapping post into a fluid post using Tully's momentum on the correct lead, looking straight down the arena in the direction in which we were to go.
I one point that may have lasted less than a minute, I noticed myself working so hard I was sweating-posting, Tully trotting down the long side of the arena, I felt elegant, strong, happy, fullfilled. I was riding a horse that would teach me how to be an excellent rider. A horse that could jump fences taller than me. Suddenly for the first time in my life I realised the commitment and the endeavor and the endurance it will take me to be able to even jump a 3 foot fence! Here I am, at last! And I thought all I had to do was sit on the back of a capable horse-hardly could I have been any further from the truth. A capable horse is crucial, but the horse will do nothing without capable guidance from the rider. The two brains need to work as one so that the two physical bodies can execute thoughts into accurate motions.
At the end of the day I went to schedule my next lesson with Marg. She told me I did very well-so matter of factly-not because she had to or because she felt she owed it to me but because she is a sincere person. I couldnt help but beam and grin andfor a second we just stood there smiling; sharing the heft and pith of this contractual commitment-me the student, she the teacher and the focal point; the horse.
"Riding a horse is allot like working on a boat" I said- reflecting on some of the theory of equitation which Marg had called out to me during our lesson (it gets allot easier the more you relax. The more you relax, the more work you can let the horse do)-feeling the theory setteling in upon my body and mind I finshed off my statement:
"The more you learn to trust yourself, the more you learn to use the role of the boat in the sea. The more you work with the boat the easier it is to get your job done. There are choices to make: fight the movement of the boat and wish for control or learn to work with the movement of the boat and harness control instead form the symbiotic bond your sharing"
Marg looked at me and said, "exactly"!
It was only later that night while talking to a friend about my my experience at Fox Bay that I used the term, full circle- having recognized the comaprison of the horse to the boat and the boat to the horse and all the water that has since passed beneath the keel. My friend, Lorena commanded me to write about it. "wrtie about it"she said over the phone.
But the fever still rages and can only be calmed by the presence of Tully whose flattering patient intelligence is more of an inspiration than a cure. There can never be a cure-only moments of absolute illumination-the nibanna -(nirvana) one will spend lifetimes trying to obtain by sitting silent meditation-constantlty eeks out of the horse's soul enveloping the human heart like an incoming tide a calm pool full of star fish and urchins and wonderful, peacefull, glittering light.

2(K) + (5)(2): a new decade

Change comes slowly with humans. We are-after all- still trying to live out our lives in an economic based system of culture ignoring borders with imposed societal boundaries governed by resource extracting- money mongering thieves..

Less than a thousand miles from the south pole where the big bang is being studied through neutrinos captured in the ice I find its not too hard to believe that 50 years ago- we put a man on the moon. But Traveling backward through time is simple to do down here- the time machine has already been installed. It is our modus operandis. Using all of our very best antiquated technologies-which we have applied to everything in order to not progress while continuing to provide for the logistical infrastructure required by the scientists, we go about slapping on duct tape band-aids. Picture a group of researchers from the jet propulsion laboratory testing robotics that might someday be employed on Mars. They are waiting patiently for a thug in muddy, torn, Carhart bibs to fire up a 40 year old oil burning heater in order to heat up the engine of a Korean war era truck so that they can drive out onto the sea ice in order to air up a beach ball whose momentum they are studying. It creates a scene that -depending on your perspective -should appear to be either painfully humorous or disturbingly depressing.

I have sketched a Fuller inspired station whose core-centered- biosphere dominates the massive dome. Sleeping pods, sunlight prisms, rotating belts, oscillating shelves, recaptured, filtered gray water which then rains down inside the hydroponic nucleus- which in turn- provides food and green life, moisture and circulating breezes are all critical aspects of the design. There is a surface level pool for swimming and an indoor track belting the greatest circumference of the dome for running, walking or cycling.

McMurdo is not about architecture-at least not yet. Nor is it about things that makes sense. Or efficiency. It is nothing anyone would ever have imagined a base in the Antarctic might have looked like in 2010. Especially Fuller. It is what people would imagine a mining town in northern Alberta -built in the late 1970s- might look like, smell like, taste like, feel like. Except for the fact that time has not traveled backwards in relation to the people who choose to work here. Women, gays, lesbians, burning man followers, old hippies, estranged husbands, frustrated insurance brokers, bored to tears professionals, archaeologists recovering from carpal tunnel syndrome, post doctorates looking to liberate themselves by washing dishes.

Those of us who believe in the future of hope imagine this town to someday -finally-be declared a super-fund site. We could all then come down, donned in our Tyvek, haz- mat -alien remediation looking suits- to dismantle this hulking abomination of manifest destiny while far off in the wilderness, scientists would be deployed with their tidy prim self sufficient mars prototype shelter pods. Field technicians -whose purpose is now to live harmoniously with assigned researchers- melting snow into drinking water, rotating the solar panels, charging the batteries, tending to camp-sit up late into the night reminiscing about the days they used to spend in McMurdo writing e-mails, schlepping cargo or cooking for 999 hungry dirty ungrateful slobs in an erroneous mining slum impervious to any one investigating anti freeze producing fish, algal blooms or halide crystallising, snow flake potentials.

I am excited about 2010 despite my rather sour-puss sounding, Eore on a rainy day, diatribe. What I did not feel in the air around town during Christmas I certainly felt over new years. But for some, celebrating Jesus's enforced to dissuade paganism- birthday in December-rather than in July by exchanging store bought gifts which nobody really wants anyway, can be a bit of a metaphysical to say nothing of a spiritual hazard compared to simply agreeing that our earth-ship has made yet another stupendous journey around the sun. Thank God!

Attitudes here are largely determined by time allotments. How much time you have left to work in this hope-void is a major component in the Psychcological factoring equation. Some, who arrived in October are already leaving this coming week. Naturally-they are elated. Others who also arrived in October might have less than 40 days to count. But for Steve and I, who left home on the 16Th of August, and arrived on the ice on the 21st, still having to face two and a half more months makes a word like daunting look trite. Carpe Diem!

Steve is still at the South Pole. After a failure to a part of the undercarriage on one of the tractors (while fortunately still at the station), the traverse has been awaiting a flight from McMurdo to bring in a part. They are expected to begin there journey back North on Tuesday. During this little delay, Steve has most importantly been able to catch up on his sleep. He wrote to say that he also played a lung busting game of high elevation indoor soccer and has gone around the station fixing a few wonky tables and broken chairs which had been driving him nuts. He got a piece of the original dome which is being torn down, attended a mind bending science lecture on cosmic back ground radiation, and has already "plowed through" all of the magazines I sent to him. Having eaten his fair share of cookies (I'm sure) the station's baker is ready to see him go.

The trip back down "the hill" (from 10,000 feet to seal level) should take less time than the trip, up-which took 26 days.

The weather has been warm with a high of 37 above zero. The run-off streams offer the most calming satisfactory bubbling noises. Sitting beside one, with the eyes closed, in the sun, is a retreat into another world. At least until a back up alarm starts drilling it's awful warning noise alarming into your ear.

I have a new roommate who is a geologist from CA. Her eight year old son is worried that she will get too cold and not make it out of here alive. She leaves soon for the Dry Valleys to study weatherization. She has offered to buy one of my pieces of art. This will be a first-and since it has been a goal of mine this season to become more disciplined with producing something artistic everyday, my new year has started off successfully.

Recently, I have started sketching images related to certain memories of fishing and writing in the margins the consequent thought streams. As an experimental idea for a book-it has opened up some blockages which I have been struggling to overcome.

It would be wrong of me to say that we are deprived down here. Today we were served sushi, fresh fruit, sticky buns and smoothies. We have just had a 2 day weekend. We are getting paid and I haven't washed a single dish since I left home-but it is fair to say that we are deprived of life forces such as photosynthesis, starry nights, rain, cat whiskers, and dawn. These reductions of natures, of home of family and friends is an incredible motivation factor for a human because it allows for retrospective introspection. The questions, What can I live without? What do I need? What do I wish to accomplish-really? spin around and around in the jukebox of the soul while enveloped within this blinding sun filled colorfully peopled colony of logistical thrumming and stimulus starved, planet of ice where no matter how hard you look there is no place to go for a milkshake.

Happy New Year!

The McMurdo metropolis: no village life at all.

The South Pole Traverse is now 25 miles from the Pole. After a week of de-fueling at the Pole they will turn around and head back to McMurdo. In less than 4 weeks from today, Steve will be done with this most amazing chapter of his life. I look forward to hearing his stories and listening to what he has seen out there -traversing where less than 30 people have ever gone before.

On Sunday, we finally talked for almost 45 minutes-three phone calls worth. Every 15 minutes the connection between the iridium phone and it's satellite would fail. Steve would then call back and we'd talk for another 15 minutes. I learned that he is tired but in a good mood and that most of all he wants to buy a brand new suit when he gets to Christchurch.

The weather continues to remain above freezing. We are all anticipating the annual deluge of water from a huge melt pool at the top of the hill above town. This melt pool is drainage from off of a glacier; it can be quite dramatic. The skua gulls are bathing in mud puddles begging for food which no one is allowed to hand out due to the rules about engaging with the wildlife as written in the antarctic treaty. The sun has been relentless. I go to work in one layer ignoring my hat and gloves; sunglasses and sunblock are more important now. For diner tonight I had fresh mixed greens with radishes and peppers. For the main course I had a lentil cake with brown rice and mushroom gravy. There were fresh sticky Mejoodal dates and a coconut pineapple pound cake for dessert.

In my room I read more about a little Aleut village I had been to once called Nikolski. Nikolski, some anthropologists believe- is one of the oldest continually inhabited places in the world. Recently there was a news article in the Times mentioning the difficulty the one room school is having with funding. They need ten students to get federal funding but the village of 28 people only has nine school aged children.

Nikolski is an amazing place. It does not have a harbor but it does have a gravel runway. It is 1000 miles west of Anchorage. The average income is below the poverty level. The Aleut langauge is still spoken in most of the households. The village consists only of some modest wooden houses, plywood skiffs, an old Russian Orthodox church, a clinic, a small power plant and some graves. There are no roads. I do not remember seeing any cars. Only four wheelers.

The island is rich in wildlife: sea ducks and fox, caribou and wild Icelandic ponies (imported for sheep and cattle ranching) and- I shouldn't have to mention this- all the crab and halibut and cod and clams and seagull eggs, wild berries, driftwood and glass fishing floats your cell phone-less heart could ever desire to find.

In the Antarctic, people imagine only isolation and wilderness but the pace of life at Nikolski today is more like McMurdo was in 1912 than McMurdo is today. Granted, 'Mac-town' only occupies a sliver of a toothpick of a portion of the continent but here we are: carbon emitting workaholics rushing from place to place, eager for the 5:30 "whistle" of freedom so that we might be able to walk away- just far enough from it all- to be able to listen to the seals breathing and the creaking of the sea ice.

I have been reflecting allot on the years I have spent living in the Aleutians, in the arctic, on the ocean in the ice pack, and most recently-on the flat white snows up on the ice cap. These memories are strange....like a lucid dream...sometimes I wonder if they were real......

When I went ashore to Nikolski, on Umnak island, I went by skiff. An old Aleut man took us in from our halibut schooner the Sunset. The tundra was bathed in the deepest of high, lush, summer greens. The domes of the little Russian church were painted a crisp fresh blue. Foals nursed. Mares grazed. All around the fireweed bloomed and the bright fishing buoys lay bleaching in the sun. Out beyond the kelp bed our schooner bobbed on the hook. When my boots hit the cobbles of the beach I was enchanted by the shaman or the raven or the horse's windy manes and tales. I ate pickled kelp and octopus signed the guest book, snapped some film, called home and sailed away.

Adaptation or-The Mid Season Blues.

For the past three winters my body has been in the northern hemisphere where winter has come with it's gradual descent into darkness. At Summit station, on the Greenland ice cap the night belongs to the winter. It feels natural; twilight lingers, lingers, blushes and then dims completely. The moon walks around in the sky full of stars and the northern lights dance to a silent pulsing drum beat. Our life slows down but we do not hibernate. The cold is tight and crisp; a clean snapping white bed sheet in a house without heat.

Now we are once again in the southern hemisphere where the sun is king and a relentless one at that. "Round and around he paces beaming rays from ever higher and higher domains in the sky blue sky. The snow, once soft and blanketing, offered a gentler, muffled white, is nothing now but clods of frozen melting dirt. Streams run down the sides of the roads gurgling. Soon the Norwegian ice breaker, Oden will come smashing down the sea ice where just yesterday planes were still landing. Whales and penguins will follow in the slow- blocky wake.

The Sun's constant radiance drives this energy making people crazy. Bosses are moody or seem manic. The town is either gummy with mud and the streets wet with water, or there is thin ice and cold wind. Nobody seems to have the ability to stop and chat. Friends that haven't seen one another in years wave hurriedly as each other passes by shouting, "we still have to get together "!

Everywhere forklifts are forking and lifting their back up alarms shrilling with agitation and warning. Large front- end loaders grind up the steep hill bearing pallets of cargo. Red, muddy pick up trucks full of leather faces, sun glasses, ball caps and beards zoom around to work on: plumbing, broken office furniture, ice machines, air compressors, doorknobs. Helicopters whirl and thrum, they lift into the air to depart, beat time and return from far off magical places: Mount Erebus's lava lakes, the algal platted shores of lake Fryxell, Marble point, Black island, Blood Falls.

It is difficult to get enough rest during the summer solstice at the bottom of the world. The base operates 24-7. Always there is equipment driving around stinking up the air with exhaust, splashing mud; there are people walking around working. On the stoop of the fuels barn, my hand on the worn bronze door latch, I pause to watch the light gilded, crossing over the mountains woven with flossing silk cloud scud.

Steve thinks that the reason most of the people drink so much down here is to fill the void of dullness with the unpredictable. They have come to Antarctica expecting grand adventures, excitement, bizarre encounters at the bottom of the world. They want to go diving with giant fish, sledding with emperor penguins, cruising on ice breakers- whale watching. They hope to get to someday be sent out to help assist some scientists. They threaten to get fired by climbing mountains pronounced off limits, or visiting any one of the all too numerously unsanctioned special places of interest and merit and mind boggling alluring beauty.

But it is, after all a job. Those of us who have come here to earn a living as a blue collar worker on this brown industrialized chunk of rock -that just so happens to be surrounded by the pristine dazzle of what everyone thinks of when they think of Antarctica- have made a compromise: for our often under appreciated, and therefore, disgruntled efforts, we might see an iceberg, or a penguin or two.